At the beginning of the year, Streetsblog embarked on a project we hope will shed light on city pedestrian and cyclist fatalities that appear to have been written off as blameless "accidents." To date, we have filed freedom of information requests with NYPD pertaining to 10 pedestrian deaths, and will be reporting on the progress of those requests, along with those submitted in the future.
It’s no secret that NYPD takes a proprietary approach to traffic death data. Even family members are kept waiting for details about incidents that took the lives of loved ones. So though our goal is to examine crash investigations themselves, this effort will be as much about the process of extracting information from police.
Case in point: Our initial 10 requests were mailed on January 27. The date of the earliest fatality was November 30 of 2009, the most recent January 26. Today we received denials from NYPD for six of those requests. Here’s the legalese as it appears above:
In regard to the document(s) which you requested, I must deny access to these records on the basis of Public Officers Law section 87(2)(g)(iii) as such records/information does not represent final agency determination.
Note that this reasoning differs from that cited in denying information about the death of cyclist Solange Raulston.
The crashes referenced in our requests resulted in the deaths of Frank Justich, Arthur Katz, Mary Mason, Virginia McKibbin, Abundio Mendez-Perez, Joe Rollino, Edith Shaller, Catorino Solis, and two unidentified victims — one in Brooklyn, one in Manhattan. In each of these cases, press reports either made no mention of charges against the driver or indicated that the driver was already cleared of culpability. In their letters to us, NYPD did not provide names to match their file numbers, so at this point we are following up to ascertain which requests were denied.
As allowed by law, we will appeal NYPD’s denials. We’ll keep you updated.
Soon after the Senate signed off yesterday on a $150 billion package of tax extenders and unemployment benefits that was promoted as a job-creation measure — a bill that lacked dedicated new funding for transportation — Democrats on the House education and labor committee were releasing their own jobs legislation.
The House proposal also lacks specific infrastructure funding, but its structure reflects a shift that could hearten urban planners and other advocates for a more city-centric approach to federal transportation funding. Three-quarters of the bill’s estimated $100 billion in aid would go directly to cities and counties to help avert layoffs of firefighters, police, and other workers.
Mayors had pressed for more transportation stimulus spending to go directly to cities but lost the political battle, as the lion’s share of the $48 billion in road and transit aid in last year’s recovery package was diverted through state DOTs. Many urban governments anticipate budget shortfalls in 2010 that could exceed those at the height of the financial crisis, with transit cuts and delays in infrastructure projects looming as consequences of the cash crunch.
Rep. George Miller (D-CA), the education and labor panel’s chairman, told Roll Call yesterday that he hopes mayors will use their political leverage to help the bill move forward in the Senate.
You might have seen it making the rounds over the last couple of days — the new Mercedes ad in which a bike messenger challenges a driver in one of the company’s luxury vehicles to a race from Harlem to the Fulton Ferry landing in Brooklyn.
There are many irritating things about the ad, including the lousy acting and the roundabout route the car takes (why the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway and not the FDR?). At more than seven minutes (it’s in two parts on YouTube), it’s also tediously long.
But worst is the perpetuation of that old stereotype, the "maniac" bike rider. The driver says at the beginning that he thinks the contest will be unfair: "Sure, he gets to ride like a bat out of hell and we have to follow the traffic rules."
And of course, that’s the way it goes. No doubt, the risk-taking footage is fun to watch, and some local blogs have posted favorably about the ad (even Bike Snob NYC is mild in his critique).
But Mikael Colville-Andersen at Copenhagenize has it right when he says the Mercedes spot is an effective attack on the idea that riding a bicycle in a major city could ever be comfortable or normal:
This is brilliant "Car Empire Strikes Back" marketing from Mercedes.
After watching it if I had to choose between sitting in a Mercedes or
riding all sub-cultural like that — give me the Mercedes any day.…
[The car industry has] spent a century perfecting the art of marketing and now that they
are faced with real competition — the rebirth of urban cycling — they
are tweaking their adverts accordingly.
The acting in the
above advert is abysmal, but the point is clear. It reinforces the
misconception of urban cycling as being a lawless, adrenaline-based and
sub-cultural pursuit. The smug tone is brilliantly devised and
executed.…
Unless
we start learning from the car industry’s marketing brilliance, as they
once learned from the bicycle industry, the battle is lost before the
foot hits the pedal. Marketing urban cycling for regular citizens like
we market every other product — positively. At every turn.
More from around the network: Utility Cycling asks whether Google’s new bike directions are a "game-changer." Hub and Spokes has a contrarian view on bike-sharing in Minneapolis. And The Transport Politic has the rundown on the top 10 transit projects completed in the U.S. and Canada over the last 10 years.
Free concerts will return to the Williamsburg waterfront this summer, but the kickoff concert — Faith No More on July 5 — and a handful of others will require an admission fee as a benefit for the nonprofit Open Space Alliance for North Brooklyn, organizers said Wednesday.
Prices haven’t yet been set, but the Faith No More tickets will go on sale through Ticketmaster on March 19 at noon. Tickets may also be purchased via phone (800) 745-3000 or at the Nokia Theatre Times Square Box Office, where there is no service fee. The presale will start March 16.
Dates and performers for other Williamsburg Waterfront concerts have not yet been announced. But the Brooklyn Vegan blog noted that a s series of eight free shows are planned.
“The benefit shows will help fund the restoration and preservation of parks in North Brooklyn, and subsidize the cost of free concerts at the Williamsburg Waterfront,” Stephanie Thayer, OSA’s Executive Director said in a statement. “As nearby McCarren Park Pool is being renovated, OSA is pleased to continue its tradition of bringing outdoor music to North Brooklyn.”
The Williamsburg Waterfront is located at North 8th Street & Kent Avenue on the East River in Brooklyn.
Village Voice entertainment columnist Michael Musto has been riding a bike in New York City for more than 25 years, long before it was fashionable or we had bike lanes and cycletracks.
Musto has never had a driver’s license, and he tells us the bicycle is an advantage in his profession. Although he’s had his share of bikes stolen (he recommends buying a used, cheap bike), he has nothing but positivity and praise for the velocipede:
I go everywhere on my bicycle. I go to work. I’ll go to my screenings, my Broadway shows, my nightclubs — and I’ll ride it for recreation too, to Central Park… there’s no downside that I can think of.
Incidentally, this is my second interview with Musto. The first came in 1999, when I was a volunteer at Transportation Alternatives. Musto was TA magazine’s Cyclist of the Month, a feature that I got to write!
The wait for bicycle directions on Google Maps has finally ended as the company announced a beta version of its new bicycle directions feature at the League of American Bicyclists National Bike Summit in Washington, D.C. this morning. The new mapping software includes an elegant overlay of bicycle routes based on priority bicycle streets and paths in the 150 cities where Google is debuting the service.
Streetsblog San Francisco Editor Bryan Goebel sat down with Google Engineer Scott Shawcroft today to discuss the new software and Google’s plans for enhancing it.
Scott Shawcroft demonstrates Bike Map for a bike summit attendee. Photo: Bryan Goebel.
Shawcroft said the software gives bicycle directions that take into account the grade of a road, the priority of a road (based on traffic volumes), as well as bike lanes, recommended routes, and bike trails. Shawcroft also said the map interface de-emphasizes driving routes and streets that are not friendly for cyclists, and shows various bicycle class designations in shades of green, from fully separated bike paths to streets with sharrows.
Data gathering was a difficult part of the process, according Shawcroft, and he encouraged users to try the mapping service and give Google feedback on what works and what doesn’t. Users can report problems directly to Google in a box on the left-hand navigation bar in the bicycle directions section of Google Maps.
You can listen to Bryan’s full interview with Shawcroft here:
Well over a hundred people filled the auditorium of the Saint Thomas Aquinas Church last week for a forum on the future of Brooklyn’s Fourth Avenue put on by the Park Slope Civic Council. The stretch of Fourth Avenue on the western edge of Park Slope saw a wave of residential construction after a 2003 rezoning, but walking there still feels akin to navigating the shoulder of a highway. The new buildings and promises of a grand boulevard have raised expectations for the street, however, and the Brooklyn Paper reports that the forum conveyed a clear public desire for traffic calming and additional pedestrian space.
On Fourth Avenue, "The Crest" meets the sidewalk with vents that mask ground-floor parking.
I was able to attend the second half of the forum, and better urban design also came across as a top priority. The new development on Fourth Avenue meets the sidewalk with blank walls, enormous vents, and curb cuts for ground-floor garages. The tenor of the audience’s questions made it clear that people are not happy about the quality of this walking environment. One exchange, in particular, I’ve been meaning to highlight.
When asked why the Department of City Planning failed to mandate transparency and active uses in the Fourth Avenue rezoning, Purnima Kapur, who heads the agency’s Brooklyn office, said that developers are too hesitant to commit to mixed-use properties in a newly residential area. "We would like to see retail on the ground floors, but in real estate, developers always lag behind demand," she said. Mandating retail, she later added, would cause some developers to not build at all, or ground floors to remain vacant.
But are developers really so risk averse? J. David Sweeny, an experienced Brooklyn developer and president of the PDS Development Corporation, allowed that "it’s hard to compel retail," but that such requirements could probably work on a street like Fourth Avenue, where 12-story buildings are now permitted, because "money is made above the ground floor."
"It’s not an excessive burden necessarily," he added. "The question is can you provide incentives so that they’ll rent the ground floor at a low enough rate" to attract retail tenants.
For the foreseeable future, however — or at least until the real estate cycle swings back around — Fourth Avenue is stuck with the planning decision to accept development with ground floors designed for cars and parking rather than pedestrians.
As for the overall prospect of transforming Fourth Avenue into a great boulevard and public space, that’s still "a twinkle in daddy’s eye," said Nick Peterson, a member of the Park Slope Civic Council who helped put together the forum. Organizers were very encouraged by the turnout, which included freshman City Council Member Brad Lander, and hopeful that the event will create more momentum. Going forward, it will be interesting to see if a sustained advocacy campaign starts to take shape around Fourth Avenue, similar to the broad coalition that has gradually won improvements at Grand Army Plaza.
NewYorkology contributor Moses Gates is an urban planner, part-time tour guide, and full-time Gothamphile. He reports on the the high up, the low down, and the out-of-the-way in New York City.
On the last day of the tenure of Mayor George B. McClellan the Manhattan Bridge opened for the very first time. One hundred years later (give or take a few months,) the bridge is in fantastic shape carrying bikes, pedestrians, four subway lines and almost 100,000 vehicles a day.
This is due to the efforts of many people, not the least “Gridlock” Sam Schwartz, (pictured at left) former chief engineer/first deputy commissioner of the Department of Transportation. During his tenure in the 1980s, Schwartz and the DOT embarked on a major capital campaign to rehabilitate and stabilize the East River bridges, which were suffering after more than a decade of deferred maintenance. One the of the bridges in the worst shape was the Manhattan.
“When I was chief engineer in 1986, I had to shut half the bridge. It was so dire we almost lost the entire bridge,” Schwartz told Streetfilms.
This past Friday, Schwartz joined DOT Commissioner Janette Sadik-Kahn, along with Ironworkers, Engineers, Painters, Electricians, and other bridge workers and aficionados at the bridge’s Manhattan Colonnade to place a time capsule — to be opened on the 200th anniversary of the bridge – inside a small nook in the grand archway that crowns the entrance.
The time capsule includes newspapers from Dec. 31, 2009; DOT Bridges safety vest, hard hat and ironworker gloves; the NYC Transit Authority Subway Map; the DOT’s annual Bridge Report; present-day electronic devices (flash drive, CD, DVR and a program from the Bridge Centennial Commission event Oct. 4, 2009. The contents were compiled by members of the Bridges Division of the NYC DOT.
“We’re here to deliver a message to the people 100 years from now,” Schwartz said.”And that message is that we’re all links – that if we don’t continue to maintain our bridges we’re going to lose them.”
And there a lot of bridges to maintain, including four that were fomerly the longest suspension bridges in the world, two of the former longest steel-arch bridges in the world, the former longest cantilevered span in the world, the largest vertical-lift bridge, the strongest steel-arch bridge, two of only four retractile bridges in the country, and arguably the most famous and recognized bridge in the world.
The event was sponsored by the NYC Bridge Centennial commission, which has been commemorating the 100th anniversary of a spate of bridges that opened between 1908 and 1910. The next bridge to celebrate its centennial? The Madison Avenue Bridge, linking Harlem and Bronx, later this year.
At the National Bike Summit in Washington, DC today, Google announced that its mapping tools can now provide bike directions in 150 American cities.
The software provides routes that point cyclists to bike paths or lanes whenever possible, avoid the busiest roads and intersections, and take into account hills, according to the Times’ Gadgetwise blog.
While New Yorkers can already get bike directions from Ride the City, you can count on two hands the number of other American cities with such luck. Google is expanding the coverage of online bike directions by an order of magnitude.
The bike routing is still in beta, and certain features, like a mobile version and a bike-specific Street View, haven’t been released yet. Additionally, bike routing is notoriously difficult, so there are probably some kinks to work out. Even so, Google’s strength has always been its ability to learn from its own data, so it’s safe to expect its bike directions to improve over time. Try it out and let us know how well it works!
and a program from the 
